Blacksmythe

cobb book signing04.JPG

Originally uploaded by Unbowed.

There are a whole range of works that deal with the politics of hip-hop. Given the freight placed on hip-hop as a social/political movement, this is understandable. Hell, I’m at work as we speak on my own foray into this growing field.

But at the same time there is a need to look at hip-hop on its own terms. To develop a critical language that allows us to compare and contrast the flow of JayZ vs. that of Too Short. At base hip-hop is NOT a culture, it is a form of ART that is comprised of four elements–MCing, DJing, breaking, and graffiti.

My man Jelani Cobb–I’ve known him virtually for several years but only met him personally this weekend–has written a new book called To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip-Hop Aesthetic. If you are at all interested in the growth of hip-hop as an artform please check it out. I think he probably focuses too much on the blues and on comparisons to the blues for my tastes, but for a book that was literally a side excursion while working on an anti-communism manuscript, this was extremely well done.

(Picture taken at the Reginald Lewis History Museum.)

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I had the opportunity this weekend to meet a brother I’ve thought of as a friend for at least five years–Jelani Cobb. Jelani was in the area promoting his new book and I got a chance to kick it with him a bit.

We got to talking about nationalism and institutions–what we were just talking about in regards to the State of Black America 2007 event–when we got on the subject of Malcolm:

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Taken from P6.

Here’s the video:

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While I’m as happy as the rest of us are that Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy got to the Superbowl I don’t quite know how much of the game I plan to watch.  I’ll be watching the halftime show, because of Prince.  I’ll be watching the commercials…for obvious reasons.

But I’m a Lions fan.  I’ve tried and tried to drop them like a bad habit but I cannot.  They stick to me like a virus.  It’s difficult for me to be really invested in the Superbowl when the team that I’ve traveled hours to watch (when they were 1-15 on top of that!) has never been there.

So it is with this in mind that I turned to my man Drew Sharp, longstanding Detroit Free Press sports columnist.  In today’s column he argues that the Lions (who have the second pick in the draft) would be fools for wasting that pick on a quarterback like Notre Dame’s Brady Quinn because only two quarterbacks have EVER gone to the Superbowl.

I thought something was fishy about these numbers, so I did some research.

First there have only been 40 post-Superbowl drafts.  So the N is going to be small anyway.  On top of that the number of possible positions that can be chosen at any given slot are about seventeen or so.

So with that in mind I just counted…how many quarterbacks have ever been taken second.

The answer?  A whopping five.

Now I don’t know what the hell the Lions should do with the #2 pick.  I do know this though.  Drew Sharp needs to get much better at this.

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When damn near everyone was capitulating. When the media outlets gave Bush pass after pass after pass I only remember a few people who were willing to say that the emperor President had no clothes.

One of them passed away today.

To say she will be missed is a brutal understatement.

Anthony Zurcher gets the final word.

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